It was an outrage that Martin McDermott, 26, was sentenced to just seven years for killing Garda Gary McLoughlin.

Since it assumed office a year ago the Government has been under constant, growing pressure to resolve the shuddering debt crisis.

The current Garda Review editorial asks demanding questions.

Prison is a place of punishment, but it will serve no useful purpose for society until it also functions as a place of effective rehabilitation.

The controversy over the St Patrick’s Day festivities in Blarney has the makings of old-style dispute between the people and the local landlord. Of course, in reality it is not nearly so simple.

Events seem to be conspiring to make even more difficult the already challenging task of having the Constitution amended to incorporate the European fiscal compact treaty.

We may grumble about escalating fuel prices at the petrol pumps but those very prices may be the key to a new era in Irish oil exploration.

Yesterday’s announcement by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn that 106 primary schools and 43 secondary schools will be built and that significant extensions will be provided for 114 other schools within five years is indeed welcome news.

It seems incongruous that a person convicted of killing a father of four and another person convicted of a €1.6m tax scam should get the same jail sentence.

THE management of information, its manipulation to create a specific impression or damage an individual, the security and integrity of online data, the role of social media in influencing public and political agendas, their role in elections, myriad issues surrounding the rights of those who generate information for commercial purposes and an individual’s right to online privacy are the subject of growing, if belated, public attention.